Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann WolfgangGoethetə/; German: ; 28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer and statesman. His body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a variety of metres and styles; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour; and four novels. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10,000 letters, and nearly 3,000 drawings by him exist...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth28 August 1749
CountryGermany
The best way to understand a painting is by drawing it.
The hardest thing is to see what's under your very eyes.
Painting predicates what man wants to see, and what man ought to see, not what he ordinarily sees.
Happy contractedness of youth, nay, of mankind in general, that they think neither of the high nor the deep, of the true nor the false, but only of what is suited to their own conceptions.
Art rests on a kind of religious sense, on a deep, steadfast earnestness; and on this account it unites so readily with religion.
Hatred is a heavy burden. It sinks the heart deep in the breast, and lies like a tombstone on all joys.
When you lose interest in anything, you also lose the memory for it.
As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.
The follies of the wise man are known to himself, but hidden from the world.
I have learned much from disease which life could have never taught me anywhere else.
Everything factual is, in a sense, theory. The blue of the sky exhibits the basic laws of chromatics. There is no sense in looking for something behind phenomena: they are theory.
If you want someone to develop a specific trait, treat them as though they already had it.
A man is really alive only when he delights in the good-will of others.
Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.